HOW DID I FRY MY GC MOBO?

[SonyQrio]

I was working on my mobo, and all I did was scotch tape the wires (better than solder imo) a 3.3v regulator to my 5v line. I turned my GC on, and nothing. I desoldiered the regulator and still, nothing. I might have shorted 5v and ground, but I've seen many people do that before and recover from it. Am I really just that unlucky?

 

[J.D]

Karma.

 

[samjc3]

 

[SonyQrio]

Thanks sam, real, real intelligent.

 

[demonicfox666]

maybe a little bit of my experience like this will help, i did the same thing the first time i attemted anything on my gamecube and thought i ruined my cube, so i bought a lot of broken cubes off ebay all disc drive problems, in my moment of curiosity i wired up a different regulator to my supposedly broken board and wouldnt you know it booted up just fine

 

[SonyQrio]

Well, unfortunately I have a DOL 101 mobo, so it has a built in power regulator.

 

[demonicfox666]

that is very unfortunate this is why i keep my 101's stock except for modchips haha well, my pearl white ones haha

 

[Kyosho]

I believe the first post in this thread has alternate soldering points for power input. You may be able to just bypass the regulator and build your own (zenloc's).

 

[Tchay]

Life's a beach, and then you swim in it.

 

[SonyQrio]

THERE IS STILL HOPE!

Thanks to demonicfox666, I went back and checked my regulator. I did some diagnostics, if you will, and found out that I fried this little chip on the built in regulator. So, I'm going out today to get some parts to wire up my PTH08080Ws to voltage traces I found leading out to the rest of the motherboard.

Powering the CPU and GPU should be interesting because they aren't directly connected to the on-board regulator. I can tap into their power traces and supply them with their corresponding voltages if I bridge them to my custom regulators.

Inorder to get sound, I'm going to have to find the power trace to the audio part of the board and hit it with my 5v line.

This should be interesting as it is the first "pioneering" I have done. Wish me luck!

If this works, I'll make a diagram.

-SQ

 

[Atari]

If by all of that you meant bypassing the onboard power regulator, it's possible, but a pain in the ass. Also, because of the layout of the Rev C GC, even if you were to bypass the onboard regulator, without some relocation there is no feasible way to cut off that portion of the motherboard. That, along with some other related issues is why mobo men like Tchay and Zenloc are using Rev A/B motherboards.

I wish you best of luck, but in case it does not work I have another Rev C mobo that I'm willing to sell:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7570
[/shameless self promotion]

 

[LOCtronicz]

Rev C motherboard can be cut almost exactly the same as Rev A/B boards. If you are going to use a custom regulator that too is possible just wire the voltages directly to the bottom of the GPU. Check Ashen's cutting guide Tecknott has a picture of the bottom with 3.43v locations and 1.9v locations.

 

[LOCtronicz]

If anybody would like to donate a Rev C motherboard I'll make a guide on cutting it.

 

[SonyQrio]

Zenloc, I'll donate this one if its fried. (Assuming you would want a dead mobo.)

 

[LOCtronicz]

Dead once are helpfull so I can sand them down and get a complete layer set. If it is fried send it my way.

 

[SonyQrio]

Ok, for those of you that actually check this thread, I got my custom regulator working!

It turns out that someone else had already done what I was trying to do, so I wasn't pioneering.

Anyway, I got my gamecube to work! So it turns out, it wasn't completely fried.

Check out my worklog: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=7634

-SQ